Exploring different CSR approaches predicting firm competitiveness

Abstract

Drawing upon signaling and organizational commitment theories, this study clusters unobtrusive corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors from the commitment and compliance dimensions to different CSR approaches, and examine how these approaches predict firm competitiveness using secondary data from Chinese public companies. It contributes to the CSR literature by providing empirical evidence that internalized CSR contributes to increasing firm competitiveness. It also contributes to the literature on firm competitiveness by identifying three aspects of core competence — financial, technological and dynamic capabilities — and their corresponding correlations with firm competitiveness, thus integrating both the resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capability perspective. The negative correlation discovered between dynamic capability and firm competitiveness challenges the views of the literature and indicates the existence of additional facets and potential boundaries of dynamic capability in the context of strongly collective cultures, such as China.